A story about finding love at any age, One Last Dance is the delightful tale of Morgan, aged 89, and Dixie, 79, two "mature" individuals on seemingly divergent paths. Despite their disastrous first meeting, complete with a ruined birthday cake, broken eyeglasses and insulting remarks, it was obvious to bystanders, even then, that the two were fated for each other.
The book follows the relationship of Dixie and Morgan, as they begin to date and ultimately decide to move in together - for economic reasons, they agree. But the business-only relationship changes and strengthens as the couple unites to combat illness, scandal and a near-fatal accident. It's also a tale about how insecurities, humiliations and fears, thought long past, can haunt a person throughout his days. Dixie fears intimacy. Morgan has concealed important details about his divorce, his estranged children, and his lost job.
When a mysterious stranger, a grandson Morgan has never met, bent on vengeance for past wrongs, invades their lives, he becomes a catalyst, reconciling Morgan with his estranged Chicago family and eventually bringing Dixie and Morgan the love and pride they'd lost decades before with the loss of their children.
About the Author :
Kay Williams is a professional actress who has played leading roles at theaters around the U.S. Among her many credits are the title role in Miss Jairus, and Cybel in Great God Brown, both part of the repertory of the 42nd Street Theater in the critically praised thriller, Butcher of Dream, which Kay co-authored with Eileen Wyman. For several years, Kay worked behind-the-scenes with award-winning independent filmmaker, Jack O'Connell, in New York City. She traveled with him to Leningrad in 1991 for the Second Leningrad Documentary Festival. Her second thriller, co-authored with Eileen Wyman, The Matryoshka Murders, was born. Coming next: Shadows of Leningrad, a sequel to The Matryoshka Murders. Jerri Williams Lawrence is a former English honors teacher, editor and writer. Mardo Williams' story is right out of the pages of Horatio Alger whose books he read as a young boy. Alger's heroes valiantly overcome poverty and adversity and this seems to be exactly what he did. He grew up on a 100-acre subsistence farm; serendipitously--after he lost his job at the Kenton, Ohio car shops because of the Depression--he answered an ad and became the only reporter at the Kenton News-Republican, a small Ohio daily. (He'd always had an inclination to write.) He had no college degree but while he'd been cleaning out the insides of the smokestacks of the locomotives up in Toledo, he'd taken two courses at the business school there, shorthand and typing, and so he was prepared to be a reporter. He did all the beats, hoofed it around the small town of Kenton digging up stories on slow news days. Nineteen years later, after World War II ended, the Columbus Dispatch recruited him to the copy desk. He moved up the ranks from the copy desk to travel editor . . . and in 1954 he was asked to develop and write stories about the world of business. Columbus was booming at this time. Mardo, familiar with pounding the pavement to search out stories, did just that. Within the year, he was writing a daily business column with byline. After he retired from the Dispatch in 1970, he freelanced for several years, editing a newsletter and doing publicity. He began his second career, writing books, at age 88, after his wife died after a long illness. At his daughters' urging, he learned to use a computer and began writing his first book, Maude. It was about his mother, who lived to be 110, and also about life at the turn of the century when everything was done arduously by hand. This was to be for family, but his daughter Kay read a few sections to her writers group. They loved it, and wanted more. The manuscript grew from 50 pages to a 334 page book with a 32 page picture insert. The finished product was published in 1996, Maude (1883--1993): She Grew Up with the Country. It has been adopted by some college American history classes as a supplemental text "to put a human face on history." Then Mardo wrote an illustrated children's book, Great-Grandpa Fussy and the Little Puckerdoodles, based on the escapades of four of his great-grandchildren. He decided at age 92 that he would try something completely different--a novel, One Last Dance. His magnum opus. He spent three years writing the first draft while touring with his first book, Maude. He persevered through illness and blindness, determined to finish it before he died. It was the most challenging piece of writing in his 73-year writing career--a long work of fiction when he'd been writing short non-fiction pieces for most of his life. After his death, his daughters Kay and Jerri spent another three years editing and revising One Last Dance, and after it was published, four more years touring with it as the centerpiece of their program, Keep Dancing! One Last Dance fills a niche, especially now that the baby boomers have turned 65. The novel gives readers hope and laughs. Book discussion groups throughout the country have read it and loved it. Many readers have said, "Well, if Mardo could do this (embark on a new romance, write a book) in his nineties, I can certainly give it a try myself; I'm only 70 or 80 . . ." Many honors came to Mardo and to his writing after his death. In 2006 One Last Dance won the Independent Publishers Award for Best Regional Fiction. The book was also one of five Finalists in the National Readers' Choice Awards for 2005. Before that, Mardo won an Ohioana Citation--their first posthumous--for his body of work as a journalist and author (for, at that time, Maude (1883-1993) and Great-Grandpa Fussy). His daughters, Kay and Jerri, won a 2009 Ohioana Award for "unique and outstanding accomplishment in the field of writing and editing" for finishing One Last Dance.
Review :
Ohioana Library Award for Writing and Editing Excellence
Independent Publisher Book Awards, Best Regional Fiction
National Readers Choice Awards, Finalist
"Who better than Mardo Williams to convey the uncertainty and fulfillment of love between senior citizens? Williams' writing shows a ready wit, and neither Dixie nor Morgan is spared from comic consequences. One Last Dance is charming and touching. That the main characters are willful and stubborn does little to diminish their appeal." --Barbara McIntyre, Akron Beacon-Journal
"The Williamses introduce us to Morgan, a handsome curmudgeon, still running from his past, and Dixie, a lovely social butterfly, who is still grieving hers. Their disastrous meeting started with smeared cake frosting and developed into a moving tribute that love conquers all pain. Williams and his daughters have achieved a thing of beauty. Do yourself a favor, snuggle up in a chair and enjoy this hallmark of senior romance." --Debra Kiefat, ArmchairInterviews.com
"Mardo Williams' One Last Dance is proof that romance isn't dead, there's life after 80, the sins of the parents can be redeemed, and old age and youth both have lessons to teach and to learn. The story waltzes through an honestly depicted world of assisted living, Social Security, hospitals and sweethearts. Lyrical prose and perfect dialog create delicious humor and pathos while the characters weave their way through all the expected trials of a good romance novel. Will Dixie end up with Morgan or with his best friend? Will Morgan ever learn to see things her way? Will she ever stop setting rules? And will Morgan's mysterious past catch up with him and tear things apart?
Romantic novels are meant to engage the emotions and leave the reader feeling good. This story of 90-year-old Morgan and 80-year-old Dixie achieves its aim delightfully. The characters are beautifully real, with the problems of aging adding depth and a time-dependent urgency to romantic entanglements. The plot's nicely woven to bring in youth and old age, and everything in between. And the writer's gentle hand with sex, politics and religion, his skill with creating scenes of ballroom and flowers around the lawn, plus his own experience of aging, brings a wonderful authenticity to it all.
Morgan's heard if you reach 90 you've got every chance of making 100. If I could still be like him at 90, I'd go for 100 too. I feel like I've met these characters, and my only regret is the author hasn't lived to see his creations dancing on the page. A perfect romantic novel for real people of real age, with honest promise for the future." Sheila Deeth, Books, Gather.com
". . .This skillfully-written book by a former journalist should be required reading for everyone involved in elder caregiving and everyone contemplating the issue of aging. It is honest, informative, and entertaining, a pleasure to read.
The book includes a Reading Group Guide which would seem to make it an excellent choice for Senior--and Boomer--book clubs." -- Marlys Marshall Styne
